Taiwan’s largest ground-level solar farm, a 181-megawatt (MW) project in Tainan’s Cigu District (七股), joined the nation’s electricity grid at the end of last month, state-run Taiwan Sugar Co (Taisugar, 台糖) said yesterday.
By the end of the year, the company plans to expand the project to provide up to 216MW of electricity, the equivalent of 300 million kilowatt hours per year, or the equivalent of the annual electricity consumption of 83,000 homes, Taisugar said in a press release.
The Cigu solar project sits on 189 hectares of land deemed “not suitable for cultivation” by Taisugar, it said.
Photo courtesy of Taiwan Sugar Co
After a bidding process in 2019, the tender for the project went to Chung-hsin Electric and Machinery Manufacturing Corp (中興電工).
It is the first — but not the last — Taisugar green power project built on land not suitable for farming, it said.
“We hope to repeat the formula for other suitable parcels [of land] owned by Taisugar,” it said, without elaborating.
Taiwan’s sugarcane trade once flourished and sugar was a major export. Taisugar, established in 1946 by the government, has diversified into various businesses, including a chain of convenience stores, hog farming, floriculture and biotechnology, as the cost structure of domestic sugar production waned in the past few decades.
Turning agricultural land into solar farms has been controversial in Taiwan, with some arguing that it needs to be preserved for food security reasons.
However, the Cigu lot was not under cultivation and could not be brought under cultivation, easing its transition into a solar farm, Taisugar said.
“The land used in the solar project suffered from subsidence and salt contamination, and struggled to support sugar cane, as well as other crops,” Taisugar said.
Merida Industry Co (美利達) has seen signs of recovery in the US and European markets this year, as customers are gradually depleting their inventories, the bicycle maker told shareholders yesterday. Given robust growth in new orders at its Taiwanese factory, coupled with its subsidiaries’ improving performance, Merida said it remains confident about the bicycle market’s prospects and expects steady growth in its core business this year. CAUTION ON CHINA However, the company must handle the Chinese market with great caution, as sales of road bikes there have declined significantly, affecting its revenue and profitability, Merida said in a statement, adding that it would
Greek tourism student Katerina quit within a month of starting work at a five-star hotel in Halkidiki, one of the country’s top destinations, because she said conditions were so dire. Beyond the bad pay, the 22-year-old said that her working and living conditions were “miserable and unacceptable.” Millions holiday in Greece every year, but its vital tourism industry is finding it harder and harder to recruit Greeks to look after them. “I was asked to work in any department of the hotel where there was a need, from service to cleaning,” said Katerina, a tourism and marketing student, who would
i Gasoline and diesel prices at fuel stations are this week to rise NT$0.1 per liter, as tensions in the Middle East pushed crude oil prices higher last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) said yesterday. International crude oil prices last week rose for the third consecutive week due to an escalating conflict between Israel and Iran, as the market is concerned that the situation in the Middle East might affect crude oil supply, CPC and Formosa said in separate statements. Front-month Brent crude oil futures — the international oil benchmark — rose 3.75 percent to settle at US$77.01
RISING: Strong exports, and life insurance companies’ efforts to manage currency risks indicates the NT dollar would eventually pass the 29 level, an expert said The New Taiwan dollar yesterday rallied to its strongest in three years amid inflows to the nation’s stock market and broad-based weakness in the US dollar. Exporter sales of the US currency and a repatriation of funds from local asset managers also played a role, said two traders, who asked not to be identified as they were not authorized to speak publicly. State-owned banks were seen buying the greenback yesterday, but only at a moderate scale, the traders said. The local currency gained 0.77 percent, outperforming almost all of its Asian peers, to close at NT$29.165 per US dollar in Taipei trading yesterday. The
RSS